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Online Retail Therapy: My First Experience with Beautylish Boutiques

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Living in a smaller city in central British Columbia means that I have limited options for places to buy luxury cosmetics. Things have certainly improved since I first started getting into beauty…we now have Urban Decay and Stila at Shopper’s Drug Mart woot woot! But when it comes to the really high end stuff, I usually have to order online or snag it when I’m visiting a larger city.

I have been absolutely dying to get my hands on Charlotte Tilbury makeup since it first launched late in 2013. As far as I know, CT isn’t carried by any Canadian retailers, but I finally found an online retailer that would ship CT (as well as several other high end brands I can’t normally buy) to Canada. Yes!! This post isn’t about what I bought (I’ll be posting on that later), but about my first shopping experience with beautylish.com. I was so impressed with their customer service that I felt it warranted its own post.

Firstly, Beautylish Boutiques has a special deal for first-time customers. They waive the shipping! I believe the shipping is normally $20 for Canadian orders. That seems like a lot, but it’s actually fairly reasonable, because the shipping is FAST! My package arrived by DHL Express and only took 2 business days to get from San Francisco to Central BC. Not bad at all. Beautylish also adds the taxes and duty onto your order when you check out, so you don’t get hit with that extra charge when the package arrives.

The second thing that impressed me was the care and attention to detail that went into the packaging. I ordered a cream shadow pot, a cream shadow stick and an eyeshadow quad. All three items were neatly wrapped in a brown bag and tied with a black ribbon. The eyeshadow quad had an extra layer of bubble wrap around it, which tells me these folks really know what they’re doing! The brown bag was also sandwiched between generous layers of tissue paper to prevent things from moving around inside the box.

The underside of the box lid was stamped “Packed with love in San Francisco” and hand signed by Lina. There was also a handwritten note in the box that said welcome and we hope you enjoy your goodies. Those extra little touches really made this rather spendy purchase extra special. I still felt like I was getting a high end shopping experience even though I ordered online. (Sephora, by comparison, sends my items in a jumbled mess with nothing more than a generic packing slip.)

I won’t hesitate to order from Beautylish in the future. Now, if only the Canadian dollar would perform a little better against the US dollar!